March 25, 2015 by btegtmeier

Points High turned one and got a new look!

We just celebrated the one-year anniversary of this blog, and decided that was a good time to make some changes regarding the hosting and design of the site. Thanks for your patience over the past few weeks while I haven’t been posting, the site was down for awhile and a few features are still missing. We are working on it!

One of these days I’ll learn my lesson and not throw up posts promising posts on X, Y or Z, that then I run out of time or lose interest for awhile and never get around to….but today is not that day. It’s a cold, snowy afternoon in Golden and I’m finally in a writing mood. The pile of work to do on my desk calls, so the writing itself will have to wait, but I thought I’d throw up a quick reminder of where we’ve been and where we’re going to get myself motivated.

Top 5 posts (most views) in the first year of Getting My Points High:

What’s coming up:

As promised here, I will continue the “Get Your Points Organized, America” series. Next up, how to use Mint.com to manage a budget and track credit card payments.

And finally, a few photos of what we’ve been up to lately. Lots of fun visitors, lots of skiing and not much actual travel. But things kicked back up again this week with The Villain gone all week in Orange County and New Orleans. I’m Houston bound twice in the next month, and we’re looking forward to upcoming weekend getaways in Grand Junction, San Francisco/Napa, and NYC.

We had such a fun day snowshoeing with Kait and Tim!

Spring skiing at Vail with my sister Jenna and Justin!

Enjoying the sunshine in downtown Denver with Chelsea and Kellen!

March 25, 2015 by btegtmeier

My big Amex Offers screw up with Tweet Deck and Lowe’s giftcards

Last week there was an awesome new Amex Offer for a $10 statement credit if you spend $50 at Lowe’s (deal is now dead). The reason this offer was so valuable is you can buy lots of different types of giftcards at Lowe’s, and essentially receive them 20% off in the end.

If you’re unfamiliar with Amex Offers, my go-to reference post is Frequent Miler’s Creating an Amex Machine. Turns out my own Amex Machine was not a well-functioning one.

I hadn’t seen a good Amex Offer in awhile, so I suppose I was out of practice, but here’s how a two-second error cost me quite a bit of time and caused me to miss out on $110. Continue reading →

March 12, 2015 by btegtmeier

Naked Wines Update: Still a good, but not great, deal.

I’ve posted several times about Naked Wines. We drink a lot of wine in our household and it’s our go-to method for ordering nice bottles of wine for cheap, with the added convenience of it being delivered to our doorstep.

Naked Wines is growing in popularity and the Angels (members-only discounts) list has grown to 75,000 people.That’s apparently the max they can handle right now because the waiting list is 17,837 people long. When I first got in there was no wait to be an Angel, so your discount was applied immediately with your first $40 deposit, and you could combine the Angel discounts (approximately 40%-60% off).

Once there was a wait list to be an Angel, they introduced a new benefit of three free bottles on your first order, which could be combined with your $100 discount. This post outlines a possible scenario where you can get 12 bottles of wine for about $115.

But to get an even better deal, I suggested taking it one step further and saving your voucher until you become an Angel. I placed an order under Caleb’s account and ended up with another stellar deal of 21 bottles for $62, but apparently this was too good to be true!

Naked Wines has apparently updated their policy to not allow customers to combine the Angel discount with any form of voucher. I confirmed that this week when I tried to use a $50 voucher (no minimum purchase, received in the mail with The Villain’s initial order), and the site forced me to choose either Angel pricing or using the voucher.

The best deal I could find was the “Trial Pack,” which is only $82 for 6 bottles, regularly priced. For me this came out to be a better deal so I used the voucher instead of the Angel pricing. We are two for two on Naked Wines matching the first contribution of $40, so they must be doing that for every new account. The total out of pocket cost came to $79.98 for 12 bottles. It’s not nearly as good of a deal as it used to be, but still better than what you’ll probably find at your local grocery or liquor store.

We are visiting Sonoma region in May, as part of our San Francisco trip, and I look forward to visiting the Naked Wines tasting room, where Angels and their friends always receive free tastings. We’ll re-evaluate our Angel membership after that. There is an option to reduce your monthly deposit to $20, or to your account (and still receive full benefits).

We redeemed a Hyatt credit card free night for one night at the Andaz Napa

To get $100 off your first purchase on Naked Wines, please use this link, not the GMPH code previously posted. That post has been updated. Thanks!

March 11, 2015 by btegtmeier

Extending the expiration date on free award nights from the Marriott-branded credit card

The Villain and I are planning a pretty epic trip in 2016 and almost all of our points and miles and credit card churning have been focused on making that happen lately. We’re trying to save money, as well as take full advantage of living in beautiful Colorado, so have made our best attempt at limiting our out of state trips in 2015. We did have about 10 free hotel nights, primarily from credit card bonuses, that expire soon that we of course didn’t want to waste.

We both signed up for the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa from Chase in the past year, when the bonus was for 70,000 points at sign-up, along with a free night at a category 1-4 property. My night expires at the end of April, but Caleb’s expires at the end of March. We had our sights on a trip to Grand Junction, on the Western Slope of Colorado, and wanted to do it toward the end of April, when it was nice enough out to enjoy some of the national parks in the area as well as be able to bike around to some of the wineries in nearby Palisade.

We’re looking forward to visiting Colorado National Monument on free days April 18-19, for the opening weekend of National Park Week

I called Marriott and asked about extending the expiration date on his free night to allow us two back-to-back nights at the same property, and the rep on the phone was very helpful in getting us booked in April, despite one night expiring in March. I had called a few months back to ask if that would be possible, and was told likely, if we had put considerable spend on the card. We had hardly his card at all since hitting the minimum spend, but it was still no problem getting the date extended.

I haven’t had as good of luck with other hotel-branded credit card free nights, including Hyatt and Hilton, but with Marriott it was very simple!

Rather than stay a night you don’t really need or let your free night go to waste, I highly recommend calling to see if they will extend the expiration date on your free night!

March 6, 2015 by btegtmeier

Two new Kimpton Inner Circle new hotel offers + new ‘nightcap’ perk

If you follow this blog regularly you know I have a HUGE crush on Kimpton hotels. I only wish there were more of them across the country. (Kimpton, pretty please come to Houston)! The good news is that Kimpton is growing fast and continues to announce more new hotels. One of the most valuable Inner Circle perks is the new hotel offer, which includes a complimentary night stay and a $50 dining credit at new properties.

I recently booked my first ever new hotel offer at The Goodland in Santa Barbara for a girls weekend in May. I logged in this morning though and noticed Kimpton recently released two more new offers: Palliadian in Seattle and Monaco, Pittsburgh. Here’s the details:

I have plans to be in Seattle during this time period so look forward to going back to Palladian, where I had a great stay during their opening week. Haven’t spent much time in Pittsburgh before, so I’ll go out of my way to make sure I can redeem the free night there by September 1.

Fancy a nightcap?

More free booze at Kimpton! According to this USA Today article, Kimpton Hotels will roll out a new nightcap program to its guests. It’s currently offered at 17 properties, but will roll out to remaining 48 hotels over next year. Nightly samplings will include a small pour of a libation with snacks, such as nuts, cookies or cheese. Typically it will be served from 9 -10:30 p.m., but some hotels will offer it earlier or pass out “speakeasy” cards.

Just another reason to love Kimpton!

How to use Excel to manage credit cards and points: Part 2

A few days back I posted a link to my go-to spreadsheet for managing our credit card system. With nearly 40 cards at this point, that’s no easy task! Thanks to some comments and reader feedback I’ll be updating the Points, Miles and Credit Card Management Template (Download) to include even more info, but in the meantime expect several brief posts that provide an overview of how I use some of the individual tabs.

1. Accounts and Info:
This tab is listed first for me because it’s the one I access the most and is sort of a “catch all” for any account where there’s a membership number or a log-in or password to be remembered. It’s nice to have these all in one place so you don’t waste timing trying various passwords, trying to remember your number, etc. This way you can vary your passwords, though I know I’m guilty of using the same three passwords for hundreds of accounts but we all know that’s not safe anymore! I know there are a lot of great password generating/saving websites and apps out there, which I’ve been meaning to try. Would love to hear your suggestions for what works for you! LastPass was one suggestion I heard at the Chicago Seminars last year.

Examples of types of information I include, and some of my favorite websites:

driver’s license numbers
passport numbers
known traveler numbers (for TSA Precheck, another lifesaver!)
social security numbers
license plate numbers
tax programs
student loans
home, car and health insurance
email accounts and passwords
Amazon, Spotify, Hoopla, Pandora and other entertainment log-ins (I recommend gofobo for advance movie screening alerts in your area)
library card numbers
dining reward programs (Seven Starbucks accounts, anyone?)
online shopping accounts
shopping portals (Ebates is usually my go-to).
store loyalty numbers
commonly used ‘PINs’or secret words
grocery store and gas rewards
Wine club memberships
Social media accounts. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest!
File and photo sharing accounts
Travel booking websites (Orbitz Rewards, Rocket Miles, Points Hound and Travel Pony are good ones).
Coupon sites (I love the ones where you log in and can easily click to make your own shopping list from their suggested deals, such as hip2save.com and livingrichwithcoupons.com)
Recipe and fitness websites (currently obsessed with myfitnesspal.com)

This is a great place to store key phone numbers, important names, passwords, etc. There is some crossover between what’s on this tab and some of the others, but this is always the first place I look.

I joke with The Villain that God forbid anything were ever to happen to me, at least he knows how to access any and every account and has full contact info and necessary information.

Just a reminder and word of caution that this type of sensitive information needs to be password protected! As I previously mentioned, I use the file-sharing service Dropbox to store this spreadsheet. I also recommend storing scanned copies of various documents such as identification, insurance cards, marriage licenses and any rewards card showing status you may need to prove, in your Dropbox account.

What am I missing? What other type of info can you think of that would be helpful to store here?

How to use Excel to manage credit cards and points: Part 1

A few days back I posted a link to my go-to spreadsheet for managing our credit card system. With nearly 40 cards at this point, that’s no easy task! Thanks to some comments and reader feedback I’ll be updating the Points, Miles and Credit Card Management Template to include even more info, but in the meantime expect several brief posts that provide an overview of how I use some of the individual tabs.